Maggie Cheung Named Ambassador of Taiwan’s Golden Horses Film Festival

The Hong Kong-born actress will star in a one-minute trailer directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, the chairman of the annual two-week event.

HONG KONG – Maggie Cheung and Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien will be collaborating on a trailer to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Taiwan’s Golden Horses Film Festival, it was announced yesterday.

The one-minute piece will mark the return of both the Hong Kong actress and the Taiwanese auteur after their prolonged hiatus from filmmaking. Cheung’s last appearance in a film was in 2010, in a cameo in Wing Shya and Tony Chan’s romantic comedy Hot Summer Days; now busy working on his latest film The Assassins, Hou’s most recent feature directorial effort was the Taiwanese-French co-production, Flight of the Red Balloon in 2008. Hou is also the chairman of the Taipei Golden Horses Film Festival.

Apart from starring in the trailer -- which will be lensed by Hou’s long-time collaborator Mark Lee Ping-bin --Cheung is also slated to appear on the festival’s publicity material featuring photographs by Shya and Taiwanese graphic designer Aaron Nieh.

According to a statement released by the festival, the trailer will see Cheung “not only look back at the history of Chinese-language cinema but leap towards an ever more challenging future“ and will demonstrate the importance and cosmopolitan nature of the Golden Horse Awards through the work of past award-winning masters."

Organizers said the festival, which will run from Nov. 8 to 23 this year, will add exhibitions and other visual arts events to its regular components of screenings, the award ceremony (on Nov. 23), the project market and the Hou-chaired film academy. The festival will also publish a book featuring interviews of 112 past winners at the Golden Horses awards.

Cheung remains the most garlanded actor at the Golden Horses, having won the Best Actress title four times with Full Moon in New York (1989), Centre Stage (1991), Comrades: Almost A Love Story (1997) and In the Mood for Love (2000), and also a Best Supporting Actress prize with Red Dust (1990). The 48-year-old is also the only Chinese actress to have won prizes at both the Berlin (Centre Stage, 1992) and Cannes (Clean, 2004) festivals.